In the cold desert of Ladakh, where the Himalayas stand like silent guardians, a demand has quietly grown, one whose implications extend far beyond this high-altitude frontier.
Ladakh, with its world’s highest passes and vast glaciers, has long been a region of strategic importance and cultural uniqueness. However, recent years have brought a cascade of changes which has altered its socio-political-ecological landscape.
For over six years, Ladakh’s farmers, veterans, students, monks, youth, and women have peacefully called for inclusion under the Sixth Schedule to secure recognition, ecological protection, and self-governance.
Their voices, however, have too often been drowned out by political noise and media neglect.
Those questioning Ladakh’s recent demand for statehood overlook a vital constitutional truth: the Sixth Schedule — meant to protect the cultural and land rights of tribal communities — can only be granted to a state, not a Union Territory. The people of Ladakh are not asking for privilege; they are asking for participation.
The recent arrest of environmental activist and innovator Sonam Wangchuk under the National Security Act (NSA) marks a dangerous turning point—thrusting Ladakh’s struggle back into focus. But the question remains, will this be another fleeting moment of attention, or the start of lasting change?
Setting the Stage: A Cold Desert at the Heart of the Third Pole
Ladakh is often called the “cold desert”, a region of stark horizons, rugged beauty, fierce winters, and resilient life. But its geography is no mere backdrop; it is the stage on which human survival, identity, and ecological connectivity play out.
Lying at the core of the Himalayan “Third Pole,” Ladakh is surrounded by glacial ice systems that feed major rivers (the Indus, Zanskar, Shyok, and more), sustaining over a billion people downstream.
Yet, in recent decades, this fragile system has come under mounting strain from unchecked tourism, unregulated infrastructure, and climate change.
The science is sobering: Assessments from ICIMOD & other research institutions indicate that glaciers in the Hindu Kush–Himalayan region melted 65 percent faster between 2011–20 compared to the previous decade, and under continued emissions could lose as much as 70–80 percent of their ice volume by 2100.
The glaciers feeding Pangong Lake have shrunk 6.7 percent since 1990, while Drand Drung glacier has lost nearly a tenth of its volume since the 1970s, and Parkachik is retreating 20m each year.
The melting of glaciers has consequences far beyond the Himalayas, affecting water security, agriculture, energy, and even climate stability across South and Central Asia.
To communities in Ladakh, protecting their land is not a niche environmental concern, it’s a necessity for millions, including us, and a long-term national security.
One of the co-authors, Anurag Maloo, founded The Voice of Glaciers Foundation, a global movement he launched in 2025 during the UN International Year of Glaciers Preservation, after surviving a 72-hour fall into a Himalayan crevasse in April 2023.
His lived experience deeply shaped his understanding of the Foundation’s mission, simple yet urgent; to give glaciers a voice through science, storytelling, and community action.
For when glaciers retreat, it’s not just ice that vanishes, it's memory, identity, and the very rhythm of life for mountain communities.
Livelihoods, Identity, and the Fight for Self-Determination
In remote villages of Leh and Kargil, barley, wheat, and rudimentary herds have sustained families for generations. Yet young people watch their peers leave in search of jobs, and the unemployment rate (often cited as around 26 percent) looms large in everyday conversation.
In schools, students & youth whisper about futures elsewhere without sustainable employment; in monasteries, elders lament the erosion of centuries-old traditions and grazing routes.
The demand for inclusion under the Sixth Schedule is deeply personal for Ladakhis. It safeguards tribal identity and autonomy over land, forests, culture, and resources, a lifeline tied to dignity, livelihoods, and self-determination. Without it, local traditions and ecological wisdom risk being erased by external notions of “growth.”
From Promise to Protest: A Timeline of Persistence & Frustration
It began in 2019, when the abrogation of Article 370 bifurcated Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories: one with a legislature, and Ladakh without one.
The decision, initially welcomed for granting Ladakh direct recognition, soon revealed a vacuum. Promises of local governance and constitutional safeguards under the Sixth Schedule remain unfulfilled.
In 2023, Sonam Wangchuk began a series of hunger strikes, calling for constitutional protection and urgent ecological safeguards for the region’s fragile environment. By 2024, he led a symbolic march from Ladakh to New Delhi, a journey that captured national attention but produced little policy action. The government acknowledged the concerns but delayed meaningful engagement, deepening the disillusionment among Ladakh’s people.
In September 2025, tensions escalated. Thousands of youth joined renewed hunger strikes and demonstrations, which turned chaotic after sporadic violence erupted. Four civilians were killed, government buildings damaged, and curfews were imposed.
Through it all, Wangchuk and Ladakh’s civil society have remained committed to nonviolence, even as frustration grows over broken promises and shrinking democratic space.
What many fail to see is that this is not a one-man movement but the collective cry of more than three lakh Ladakhis spread across 59,146 square kilometres, a region larger than Jammu and Kashmir itself.
Geopolitical Stakes & Security Imperatives
Ladakh occupies a critical geostrategic position, sharing borders with China’s Aksai Chin and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The Indian Army has long been a pillar of stability here — guarding borders, leading disaster relief, and maintaining vital connectivity across one of the world’s harshest terrains.
As Ladakhis press for greater devolution of power, the real question is not whether autonomy undermines security, but how the two can coexist.
Decentralisation should reinforce, not weaken, India’s security framework. Yet this remains the central tension: can genuine autonomy thrive in a militarised frontier?
The answer is not zero-sum. First, a framework built on trust and devolution strengthens border integrity rather than undermines it.
Second, local stakeholders can serve as guardians supporting sustainable development, ecological monitoring, and early warning systems.
Third, autonomy need not mean isolation; responsive inclusion provides a stronger and more enduring defence than distant, top-down control.
In the wake of the Galwan clash, ongoing Indo-Pak tensions, and a rapidly shifting Himalayan geopolitics, New Delhi’s caution may be understandable, but it is not indefensible.
History shows that trust, inclusivity, genuine representation, and local agency foster greater stability and resilience than efforts to centralise power.
The Media Must Listen, Unbiasedly
Over the years, mainstream coverage of Ladakh has been sporadic and selective, appearing only in flashes — protests, arrests, or clashes.
In an age where headlines move faster than facts, peaceful demands are often drowned out by propaganda and reframed as separatist. Such distortion must be called out and countered with clarity.
Misrepresentation and oversimplification are dangerous. To cast the native struggle as sedition undermines its legitimacy, pigeonholes voices, and narrows public understanding.
In an era of polarisation and speed, we need deeper narrative integrity.
Missing Voices & Critical Gaps
Addressing Ladakh’s crisis requires recognising its often-overlooked complexities, from the political divide between Leh’s Buddhist-majority and Kargil’s Muslim-majority populations to their shared struggle for autonomy, representation, and environmental justice.
Rooted in deep spiritual traditions, Ladakhis regard glaciers as sacred, living guardians—a worldview of coexistence rather than control.
Yet their struggle mirrors that of Indigenous communities in the Arctic, Andes, Alps, and Tibet, facing melting ice, climate displacement, vanishing livelihoods, resource exploitation, and shrinking sovereignty.
As the central government considers extending Sixth Schedule protections to Ladakh, it must avoid the pitfalls seen in the Northeast, including financial dependency, bureaucratic inertia, and limited self-governance, and instead design a model that empowers local stewardship with genuine fiscal and institutional autonomy.
Towards Solutions: Dialogue, Recognition & Participation
How should the government respond? The path forward must be inclusive, respectful, and solutions-oriented. Here’s a roadmap that balances aspiration with pragmatism:
Grant & Implement Sixth Schedule Protections or a Bespoke Autonomy Statute.
Empower Local Governance Structures.
Establish a mini-assembly with legislative, executive, and financial powers, not just token advisory status, to ensure local participation in every decision affecting Ladakh’s future.
Adopt a Mountains-First Development Model.
Prioritise and invest in ecologically aligned sectors like eco-tourism, solar energy, micro-hydro power, high-altitude agriculture, glacier science, and mountain research.
Anchor these vocational programs in Ladakhi institutions. Enforce strict limits on unregulated development & introduce a strong CO₂ emissions law tailored to mountain ecosystems.
Foster Institutional Innovation.
Create a Himalayan Council for Sustainable Development, co-chaired by local leaders, mountain specialists, scientists, defence officials, and youth, to balance security, ecology, and development under one framework.
Strengthen Education & Climate Literacy.
From primary schools to higher education, curricula must integrate glacier science, mountain ecology, and local knowledge which institute like HAIL and SECMOL are already doing.
Dialogue, not Suppression.
Recognize peaceful protest as democratic participation. Institutionalise regular consultation mechanisms. Rather than demeaning and punishing climate activist and environmentalists, the government must make them part of policy-making.
Proposed National Reform.
A Mountain Governance Model for the Future: India’s high-altitude regions — from Ladakh to Arunachal — are not just frontiers, they are living ecosystems that sustain rivers, cultures, and climates. Yet, they continue to be governed through frameworks designed for the Governance Model. India requires a dedicated Ministry for Mountain Ecosystem Development, one that engages local communities and crafts policies suited to fragile mountain states.
Such measures can turn frustration into collaboration by creating a governance model that balances national security, environmental stewardship, and human dignity.
When the Glaciers speak, the Nation must listen, because they have no borders, no ballot, no defence, and they depend on our collective conscience. Ladakh’s crisis is also one of climate justice.
The people least responsible for global emissions bear the greatest cost of glacial melt, water scarcity, and livelihood loss. Their carbon footprint is negligible, yet their suffering is monumental.
The time for empathy without action is over. The glaciers are speaking. The question is, are we listening?
(Kanwal Singh is a columnist and policy analyst from J&K & Anurag Maloo is a mountaineer, survivor, SDG advocate, and the Founder of The Voice of Glaciers Foundation. This is an opinion piece, and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)